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Thursday, January 8, 2015

"Forbidden Places": An Excised Piece from "The Meat Puppets and the Lyrics of Curt Kirkwood from "Meat Puppets II" to "No Joke!"

Forbidden Places

Introduction

Forbidden
Places, Meat Puppets’ major label debut, was released in 1991 on London
Records.They were one of a generation
of punk/indie/alternative bands to have such a release.The record is a typical mélange of styles that
the band had become known for:country,
heavy rock, psychedelic, breakneck instrumentals.But even before a contract was signed
frustrations presented themselves.Breaking free from SST Records, for instance, turned out to be not as
easy as the band would’ve liked.Additionally, extra layers of bureaucracy were imposed upon them from
the label.Finally, a new way of
professional recording was introduced to the band, a way in which Curt,
especially, was required to step back and give up some of the studio control to
which he had become accustom.

The
Record

Soon after their last
release on SST Records release, Monsters
(1989), the band began having negotiations with people at London Records.According to Curt, sometime in 1990 they
actually signed a contract to make records for the major label.Because of their fairly substantial producing
experience, the band and London agreed that Meat Puppets should make their
first album themselves.This recording
method, after all, was from where their success thus far had come.So they recorded two songs, “Forbidden
Places” and “This Day,” at Chaton Studios in Phoenix with Steve Escallier, a
studio and an engineer they had worked with before.According to Derrick these demos were of
inferior quality compared to the band’s self-produced records they had made for
SST Records.Accordingly, the executives
at London didn’t like it. "That was
our entrance into this weird major-label thing,” says Curt. “They tricked us.
They hired us and said we could produce our own stuff. When we got there, they
were like, ‘Ha, ha.’” (A & I 197)

The rejection of this recording was a lesson learned
by the band of how things worked at the major label level.SST Records was completely uninvolved in the
making of Meat Puppets’ records.The
band would make a record, hand it over to SST, and the label would release
it.At London, however, things were a bit
different.If the band made a record
that the executives at London didn’t like, the label wouldn’t release it.The band would need to learn how to make
records that both they and the label executives could agree upon.

It was decided that they would record at Capital
Studios in Hollywood, a studio with a storied history in the music
business.Pete Anderson was picked to
produce the record.Somehow Anderson had
got wind that Meat Puppets were looking for a producer, and having met them
through his work (as guitarist and producer) with Dwight Yoakam (who had played
a gig or two with Meat Puppets some years earlier) proffered his services for
the project.All agreed, and he was
hired on for the project.

Recording at a major studio with a major label budget
(Curt estimates they spent between $50,000 and $100,000 on the record) was a
new experience for the band.For Curt,
especially, relinquishing control over what he perceived to be his product was
difficult.Because of his stature as a
big time producer, one who knew his way around a studio, Curt didn’t question
decisions made by Pete Anderson.This
was a first as Curt was used to producing his own records: "I work real hard on my craft, and it’s hard to work as much as you do on
it and then have other people come in and do more to it when you think you’re
done” (A&I 264).Curt says he felt a
bit more like a worker in an organization rather than a creative artist while
making Forbidden Places.

Of the three Meat
Puppets, Cris, being someone who enjoys working in studios, seems to have
enjoyed the experience of recording Forbidden
Places the most.Whereas Curt and
Derrick would come and go as they were needed in the studio, Cris was
constantly there, if not playing bass and singing, then watching Pete and
engineer Dusty Wakeman create a record.As for Curt and Derrick, the learning curve for Cris was steep, seeing
how major label bands make records was a paradigm shift for him.He tells the story of a moment when Anderson
felt some more percussion was needed on one of the songs.The band naturally thought one of them would
do it.After all, that’s the way they
had always made records.But Anderson
brought in a guest musician, a professional percussionist, Alex Neciosup-Acuña,
someone who unknowingly had played an important part in the Kirkwood brother’s
musical (and otherwise) coming of age.Cris tells the following story:

The first time Curt and I smoked pot together was before this
Weather Report concert in Phoenix in’75, and who should be the drummer on that
gig but Alex Acuña.So I’m like, “How
cool.”The guy comes in and does the
shaker part completely spot on, one take.That was definitely perfect.And
then he smells weed and he’s like, “Who’s got weed?”And we have good weed, so we go get
stoned.And I’m smoking pot with the
guy, and I tell him this story, that “the first time me and my brother ever
smoked pot together was one of your gigs in ’75 with Weather Report, and now
here you are playing on one of my records and getting stoned.”Charming. (personal interview)

All-in-all, Meat Puppets’ experienced the recording
of Forbidden Places as an exercise in
taking their craft to the next level, as they say.But it was also a bit intimidating for this
group of Phoenician stoners to be walking the hallways of a Hollywood studio
rubbing elbows with pop music royalty.Curt says,

We were at Capitol Studios, which was somewhat
intimidating.You’re in this amazing
studio.Lots of cool people have been in
there, right in the belly of the beast in Hollywood.We still had our little hiding place
area.We’d just hang out and let the
stuff go on around us.“Ok, time for
guitars,” and so we’d come out of the hiding place and do some guitar stuff.

. . .

I wasn’t uncomfortable at Capitol, I was just minding my own business
cuz in the other room there’s Donna Summer.At one point Steven Seagal showed up with Kelly LeBrock, and across the
hall was Etta James. (personal interview)

It wasn’t
that Meat Puppets really held any ideological bent toward staying with SST
Records.They would have made the move
to the majors earlier had the chance arose.Indeed, in 1986 they had a meeting with Geffen Records executive Gary
Gersh, the man responsible for signing Nirvana a few years later.He decided not to sign Meat Puppets.Curt and Cris like to tell the story.Here’s the way Cris tells it back in 1993:

Years ago
we went into Geffen and talked to the guy, Gary Gersh, who sat there and told
us how he signed Gene Loves Jezebel without even hearing them play.He just met the brothers.Just by the way they looked.And this is in like ’86.And we’re goin’, “That’s really nice
Gary.”He’s sittin’ in his socks in his
gajillion dollar office on Sunset and the Geffen Company which is just so
exciting.He tells us he doesn’t sign us
then ‘cuz we’re unfocused. (personal interview)

So at least from 1986 Meat Puppets were willing to
entertain the idea of leaving SST for a major label, and they had reasons for
doing so.According to Derrick, at
least, the band wasn’t happy on SST:“We
weren’t happy there and I don’t think we were treated fairly there” (personal
interview).The main reason, it appears,
that the band wasn’t happy at SST was lack of distribution.As Derrick tells it, the band would be
touring with bands on major labels and,

We’d get
into these major market towns, Boston, New York, etc., and find out that our
opening band’s records were completely all over the record stores and the label
was stocking the stores and making sure the promotion materials were
there.They were doing lots of
interviews and lots of people were going to see them.And we had real trouble, especially with our
last release.So we knew that there were
advantages that SST couldn’t have. (personal interview)

Curt
backs up Derrick’s claim:“I could definitely see how it’s hard to meet the supply and
demand on the indie label at that time.We
weren’t seeing our records in stores as much as we’d like to and started to see
the difference there” (personal interview).

Derrick
also suspected band favoritism at SST, a label owned by members of Black Flag,
an SST band:“SST was owned by somebody
that was in a band that was on the label.We always suspected that that band would get preferential treatment”
(personal interview).Derrick offers the
following as evidence of SST’s preferential treatment toward Black Flag:

When we
toured with Black Flag, we both had a new record out at the same time.Their records would be in the store and ours
wouldn’t be.SST was obviously more
interested in pushing My War compared
to Meat Puppets II. (personal
interview)

Coupled with the band’s feelings of suspicion toward
SST was another reason for wanting to move to a major label, they were feeling
like they were outgrowing their hometown scene.Derrick continues from his remarks about SST:

We’d come
off of a tour and find that most of our old scene bands were broken up, drug
abused, married, or dead, or drunk, or whatever. . . just basically moved along
in one way or another, and we were surviving.The next step was alienation from the scene that started us. (personal
interview)

Derrick’s
point here, I think, is that Meat Puppets were still around, but their Phoenix
punk rock scene, even the Los Angeles punk scene, in which they had begun had
evolved into a new scene, with new bands and clubs.By the mid-eighties Meat Puppets were a
playing within a national, even international, scene rather than a local
one.They felt the support personnel a
major label could muster could help them succeed in this larger scene more than
SST Records could.Derrick again,

We wanted
to sign with a major label so that we could get help doing these things, and
not have to do it on such a shoe string.We needed to get a lot of our business practices straightened out.So we hired professional management and
accounting and stuff like that to make sure we could be a more efficient
organization. (personal interview)

After
all, this is what a career in the music industry meant, moving to higher
levels:“If you don’t move on then
you’re stagnating.Standing still is
still going backwards” (Derrick, personal interview).

Curt, Cris, and Derrick, then, were ready and
willing to embrace the support a major label could provide.The record itself shows the willingness of
the band to play along with practices that purportedly make an album
marketable.The longest song on the
disc, for example, is four minutes long, the shortest is 3:04; perfect lengths
for “radio friendly” songs.Lyrically,
though still comfortably within Curt’s realm of psychedelia (hallucinations,
discomfort with reality), the songs on the album come close to making sense,
rather than being oblique.Also, there
aren’t any signature musical “meat puppet moments,” those spots on other recordings
where Curt takes fantastic extended guitar adventures.These features of Forbidden Places make for a more audience friendly, accessible,
recording.It isn’t a coincidence that
they chose to make an accessible recording for their major label debut.

“Whirlpool” is a perfect example of Curt’s
attempt at commercially acceptable psychedelia.It has a fairly accessible lyrical theme (anxiety about leaving our
comfort zone) and a dose of animated animalia and, with the main character,
animated water.Curt’s psychedelic
guitar noises are here, too, but they are layered back in the mix and are
buttressed by the structure of the song as guitar solos.

What Others
Say about Forbidden Places

The general critical consensus about Forbidden Places is that it is a good,
if not great, album that was drowned in the grunge tsunami that washed ashore
in the wake of Nirvana’s Nevermind.Wilson and Allroy, for instance, suggest it
to be a “Nearly perfect” album that “Should have gone platinum!” (Wilson and Allroy).John Rausch, on Bondolik, places Forbidden
Places among Meat Puppets best when he writes that it is “One of the four
great Meat Puppet albums” that can “hold its own with any of the more
celebrated Meat Puppets albums” (Bondolik).

As evidence that I’m not the only one who
recognized the significance of Forbidden Places
as Meat Puppets move from to the next level of the music industry, many writers
began their reviews by mentioning this as the band’s major label debut:

First album
on a major record label. . .(Wilson and
Allroy)

. . .their
first with a major record label. . .(Bondolik)

London
Records is a major label, right?If so,
this is the Meat Puppets’ major-label debut. . .(Prindle)

Others
wrote of Meat Puppets “leap to a major label” (A&I 48) and their “shift to
a major label” (A&I 299).

The move to a major label was rightly seen
as evidence of a band “apparently aiming for a more mainstream rock community”
(Satan), a band willingly leaving the artistically pure realms of indie and
punk rock for the now blossoming commercially profitable realm of alternative
rock.Others, perhaps foreshadowing the
bands demise in the next four years, saw this move to the mainstream as “death
for a band that has built its reputation on going against the grain” (A&I 299).

As for the album itself, many writers
applauded the improved production that a major label budget and big-time
producer brought to the songs.Mark
Prindle writes of “production so great, they actually sound like a REAL BAND” (Prindle).It is seen as an album that is “much slicker”
(Bondolik) than their more famous
earlier records like Meat Puppets II
and Up on the Sun, that shows Pete
“Anderson’s influence” (A&I 162-63).

There were, of course, those who praised
Curt’s guitar work as “exceptional” (Satan),
“accomplished” (Entertainment Weekly),
and “awesome” (Prindle), and even a
few who appreciated his new well-produced voice:he “shed the off-key singing for a more
comfortable listening experience” (Satan),
he actually hit “all kinds of beautiful notes in a calm, friendly voice” (Prindle), and, throwing Cris into the
mix, Forbidden Places “suggests that
the Kirkwoods may yet learn to sing” (Rolling
Stone).

There are those who criticized the
album.John Chedsey, for instance, wrote
that much of the album is “red hot,” but when it’s not, it is “a complete lame
duck” (Satan).Others suggested the entire album is “tired
and unimaginative” (Rough Guide), and
David Fricke, writing in Trouser Press
Guide to ‘90s Rock calls it “so-so.”

The consensus on Forbidden Places, however, is that it came out at the wrong time,
the moment of Nirvana.As John Rausch
writes, “With all of America focusing on Seattle, Forbidden Places wend completely unnoticed” (Bondolik) in “grunge mania” (TP90).Greg Prato writes of how it got “lost in the
shuffle since it was released just prior to the Seattle explosion” (AMG).The result was a decent album that “was largely ignored” (A&I 3)
and, because “sales figures didn’t materialize” (A&I 162-63), “bombed”
(A&I 299).

Conclusion

So Curt, Cris, and Derrick were happy with
the finished product that was Forbidden
Places, and so it seemed was London Records.It had a good single, “Sam,” and a decent
enough video, “Sam,” too.But the record
flopped.A big reason for this flop, I
contend, was the release of Nirvana’s Nevermind
just two months later.Everything
changed.Grunge was in.London (and all the other rock music labels,
for that matter) wanted a grunge band.They no longer wanted Meat Puppets to be their trippy self-indulgent
selves, they wanted an alternative friendly Curt, Cris, and Derrick.

The desire to put forth a more grungy Meat
Puppets led to delays in the recording and release of the band’s next record.Different producers were tried in different
places, for instance.Different projects
were started and stopped.But then Kurt
Cobain publicly announced his fondness for the band, and Meat Puppets made a
demo or two that sounded awful grungy, and Too
High to Die was given the green light.In the next chapter I’ll discuss the making of the band’s second major
label release.